Tonight is our last night on South American soil. Tomorrow morning we shall board the “Santana,” a 50-foot catamaran skippered by a German guy named Gisbert with whom we will sail for five days. The first two days will be spent sailing the Caribbean from Colombia to the San Blas Islands, a sparsely populated archipelago off the coast of Panama where we’ll spend our final 3 days. Some of the islands are deserted while others have small settlements populated by the indigenous Kuna people. We are all stocked up on motion sickness pills and hoping for smooth weather!
We had a great time in Cartagena, enjoying the company of our travelmates, Howie and Marisa. The photo gallery below is all courtesy of Howie, our documentarian for the week. Cartagena is a great place to walk around, particularly the historic walled city center where we spent the better part of our week. As the hour is growing late and we have not yet finished packing for tomorrow’s nautical journey, we’ll have to let the pictures do the talking. Cartagena is a touch on the touristy side, with hawkers aggressively pushing all manners of goods on the steady stream of passing visitors. It makes for a bit less-than-pleasant experience at times, but not so much as to spoil the charms the old city by the sea has to offer. In addition to Cartagena, we took a day trip out to Playa Blanca, a gorgeous beach a few hours by ferry from Cartagena. The pictures in the gallery below are all from Cartagena and Playa Blanca, with the exception of a single street scene from our layover in Bogota.
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i love a good intercontinental boat trip – having only done europe to africa though – this sounds reeeeally good. Watch out for pirates
in the words of Paul Simon “Homeward bound…” Whopeee!!! Agree with Ari about the pirates….But I can’t wait for you all to lead me to where the best coffee is NYC 🙂
Here’s hoping that the small boat we saw in the images was NOT the Santana……. We are all soooo excited to see both of you soon.
Love,
ma and Da
Hey y’all,
Sorry there was no “guest post” by yours truly; I was just too greatly enjoying a couple weeks off the computer. I definitely took lots of photos, though, of which the above is just a smattering. At any rate I can still offer a third party report here in the comments: Colombia is an outstanding and diverse destination, and the two intrepid travelers telling these tales have indeed been in good spirits whilst taking a mighty fine chomp out of the Great Plantain.
Oh, and for the record, the black hooded figure being kissed by the lovely lady is by no means the condemned. To the contrary, that’s actually the executioner, a.k.a. the American Public Where Soccer’s U.S. TV Ratings Are Concerned; we came across him as he was stationed next to the guillotine in the Inquisition exhibit in Cartagena. The guy in the noose, however — that’s the guy that dared suggest that soccer is generally more intense, impassioned, and athletically challenging than baseball.